VIA USS CLUELESS: A fascinating article by an Australian writer, Rob Foot, whom I've not heard of before, on the prevalence and reasons for anti-Americanism. I strongly recommend reading the entire article. Reading it reminded of something the exiled Russian writer Vasili Aksyonov wrote of in his memoir, In Search of Melancholy Baby. Aksyonov wrote that in his youth all of Europe paid respect to the Soviet Union, recognizing the utter inevitability of the world-wide Socialist Revolution. Even the ruling classes understood that it was only a matter of time before they were swept aside by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Much that made European civilization civilized would be lost in the upheaval, but in the end there would be a better world for all humanity. So, workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, and you have a world to win! Forward, comrades!  And yet...and yet there was a place called America, lodged safely out of sight on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Great Socialist Revolution was a tempest in a samovar, where people were too busy working and making money and building skyscrapers and airplanes and automobiles to worry too much about some piddling little revolution launched by people with unpronounceable names. Even the proletariat didnt care about the revolution; they didnt go on strike to overthrow the class system--they wanted more money! They wanted to be part of the very system that was oppressing them. You couldnt tell them that they were victims of false consciousness and that they should bring down the system; they wanted a house in the suburbs! And a white picket fence! And good schools to send their kids to! And a car of their own! And what's worse, the capitalist system was actually providing them with these things, the very things socialism said it would provide them when the revolution came. What to do about this America that refused to bow to the laws of historical inevitability?

The shrieks of protest from the hard Left are the shrieks of religious believers who have been told, absolutely and beyond the possibility of doubt, that there is no God. Religions generally have the good sense to promise Paradise on the other side of the grave, where the possibility of someone proving empirically the falsity of faith-based contentions about an afterlife are minimal to the point of nonexistence. Socialism tried to impose Paradise in the actual breathing living world, where it was eventually shown for the fantasy it always was. Someone has to be to blame for this. Once upon a time it would have been the Jews; now it's the United States. Also, I found this article via USS Clueless, and Mr Den Beste has some good things to say about it that you might want to read.